Rain could make for tough Rally Japan

Despite Japan baking in an Indian Summer with temperatures rising above 30 degrees, Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala has warned of the possible problems sudden rain showers can cause on Rally Japan.

The Finn reported a good road surface for much of the Sapporo-based event on the two-day pre-event recce, but he said parts of the Sunday route - particularly the superspecial stage - could be tough if it rains.

“Before the recce there had been some heavy rain around there,” said Latvala. “And with the surface of the road like it is, the water doesn’t really get sucked into the surface - it just sits on top of the road like soup. It can make it quite tricky when the conditions are like this. We saw last time, in 2008, we had some aquaplaning moments when it had rained really heavily, we could see that again.

“On the whole the recce was good, we had no problems. The stages on Friday and Saturday are quite similar to 2008, which is good. The roads have been re-graded for the event, but the grading is all in big, loose gravel which, in the dry weather, will get quite cut up. Sunday is all new and there are some sections which are narrow, but generally they’re good roads.”

Latvala’s fellow Ford driver Henning Solberg admitted he wasn’t completely at home on the southern Hokkaido gravel.

“I preferred this event when it was in Obihiro (further north on the island of Hokkaido),” said Solberg. “The roads were better up there, they flowed more. I don’t really like these stages - I don’t know why we do some of them, except I guess there’s more people out here than there was in Obihiro.”

The forecast is for continued warm weather, but with an increasing chance of rain. The 35-degree temperatures which hit Tokyo yesterday were replaced with torrential rain today, which is believed to be associated with a typhoon moving into the area - that weather front is not expected to move north in time to effect the 10th round of the World Rally Championship.